Our evenings ran on a script. Kids down by eight. Dishwasher on. Telly on. Two phones out. He’d scroll the football, I’d scroll houses we will never buy, and around half ten one of us would say “bed?” It always meant sleep.
Nothing was wrong, exactly. We still laughed. We still did the big shop together and split the school runs. But somewhere between the second baby and the third car seat, we’d stopped flirting. A woman on Reddit put it better than I ever could:
“Yet, I feel like a slightly glorified roommate.”
Posted on Reddit
The part I never said out loud
The thing I couldn’t say, not even to my sister, was that I didn’t feel wanted any more. Not unloved. Not unattractive, exactly. Just not wanted. He kissed me goodbye in the mornings the way you pat your pockets for your keys.
What I didn’t know was that he’d been lying next to me thinking exactly the same thing. When it finally came out, one Sunday over two cold cups of tea, he said it almost word for word like a man I later found on Reddit:
“But somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling like I was wanted.”
Posted on Reddit
Two people in the same bed, both waiting to be chosen. If that sounds familiar, you’re in good company. It’s one of the things couples write about most online, and men say it just as often as women.
Why talking about it made it heavier
We tried to fix it like grown-ups. We had The Talk. We booked a proper date night (£148.60, I kept the receipt; we were home by ten and asleep by half past). We promised each other “more effort”.
And effort was exactly the problem. The moment it became a project, it went on the list with the bins and the school forms.
“I don’t want intimacy to become something I associate with pressure, guilt or resentment.”
Posted on Reddit
He didn’t want to always be the one asking. I didn’t want to be asked like it was an appointment. So nobody asked at all. One Tuesday I opened the notes app on my phone and, half as a joke, wrote this:
Tonight:
- Dishwasher
- Pay the gas
- Reply to the school chat
- Fold the washing
S*x.
I never sent it. I didn’t delete it either.
The gift I nearly got wrong
For months my feed had been full of “libido gummies”. You’ve probably seen the ads: a woman in her car, a dramatic story, a miracle by bedtime. I came close to buying some for him.
Then I pictured handing them over. “Here, these are for you.” That isn’t a present, it’s a hint. And a hint like that lands like a complaint. Someone on Reddit summed it up in one line, about a very similar gift:
“so really this is a present for you, not me”
Posted on Reddit
I didn’t want him to change. I wanted something that was ours.
Then I found one for each of us
That’s how I ended up with Desire Cubes, from Tiffanya. Yes, the lingerie people. I’d bought from them before, which is probably why I trusted them more than a stranger crying in her car.
The idea is almost silly: a soft, sugar-dusted gummy with a gentle chilli warmth. Sweet first, warm after. You have one each. That’s it. That’s the ritual.
I’m a sceptic by nature, and I’d read plenty of people online calling these things “just placebo”, or saying the only real ingredient in some of them is caffeine. So I did what I always do. I turned the pouch over and read the back.
